“Thirty percent.” Andrea says, looking at the papers in front of her. “Are you sure that number is correct?”
“As sure as I can be.” One of her advisors responds. “It was higher than expected, but still well within what we were prepared for.”
Andrea rubbed her temples as she thought about what to do with the statistic. The city had thrown off balance quite badly when over 80% of its population had disappeared 30 days into the tutorial, and it had taken a while to stabilize again. Around that time, they had anticipated 80% of the remaining population would be kicked out once they reached the 60 day mark, and had been down sizing all operations to deal with the shift.
During this whole process, a spark seemed to ignite in the population of the great city, and many began to travel through the floors of the tower in an effort to increase their title tiers and gain levels. This had resulted in the expected population of the city increasing by about 50% once the cutoff day came around. They needed to make plans to adapt to the change, and given that there was only one week left until all of the C tier individuals were kicked out, it would be tough, but she did have one idea for how they could adapt.
Andrea sighed as she looked back to her advisor. “Do we have estimates for how many have died trying to get past floor 20?”
The man slid over another piece of paper, showing the amount of individuals who had left and had yet to return. The general assumption was that anybody who had been gone for more than 4 days at a time was to be presumed dead unless somebody else could vouch for them being still alive.
“189 people.” She frowns. “189 people, killed by that titan.”
“We did warn them of the dangers involved.” Her advisor says, nodding solemnly.
“It is still a tragedy.” Andrea sets the paper back down, waving her advisor away. “I need to be alone for a few minutes.”
“Understood.”
Her advisor leaves the room, and she lets out a deep breath.
“189 people.” She says again. “It is less than I thought it would be. That titan is pretty tough after all. What did you think of it?”
From the corner of the room, a dark figure emerges from a powerful stealth skill. Andrea only knew he was there because she had seen him activate the skill. When he really didn’t want to be seen, Ram was nearly impossible to find.
“It was strong, there is no denying that. From what I hear, people are taking it on in teams of 10 at a time, the maximum allowed on a semi-instanced floor. It makes the boss far more manageable.”
“I imagine it does.” She nods. “Though I imagine it can’t be great for their levels.”
“I believe they are doing it for the title, not the level.” Ram responds. “Though I can confirm that very few of them are progressing much farther after completing the floor. The biggest boon of this is the influx of high rarity items that people are bringing back from the chain floors. They have been helping our higher leveled fighters significantly in progressing through the floors.”
“How far along are they by the way? I heard some of them are nearing the end of floor 33.”
“Yes, they are. A few have already finished it, though floor 34 is proving to be a challenge for many. It is an instanced floor, so working as a team is not an option there.”
“What is the challenge of the floor?”
“It appears to revolve around diplomacy and negotiations. You may not have a very difficult time with that floor if you decide to go there.”
“Probably not. Anybody with a decent grasp of negotiations could deal with a constructed scenario. I have yet to ever see one that can accurately capture the chaos of a real debate between kingdoms.”
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Well, I have completely and utterly failed at my job. Right now, I was using all my strength to pull back on the chains I had wrapped around my kingdom appointed advisor. I knew there was a possibility of him losing his cool, but this was a bit more explosive of a reaction than I had been expecting.
Across the table, there was another individual being restrained by their attendant. They had evidently also lost their cool. Right now, the only two people with a level head were me and the level 115 attendant that was there to protect the other individual that was a part of this discussion.
Floor 34 had been an absolute train wreck from the beginning. It had not been centered around combat or fighting like the previous few floors had been, instead being focused entirely on battles of words. Those were not really my forte, and I had been struggling immensely for the past two days.
It had all started when I appeared in a throne room and was told that I would be in charge of foreign affairs, tasked with steering the kingdom away from an inevitable war with a neighboring empire. I had a bit of time to prepare, then arranged a meeting with the empires equivalent of my position.
I knew that I had absolutely no hope of avoiding war if left to debate the issue on my own. I had basically no experience in this area, and I knew I would somehow get half of the damn kingdom annexed if I tried to do this alone. That is why I had relied heavily on my appointed advisor, a hot headed man who at the very least was politically savvy.
The plan had been to present the advisor as the real head of foreign relations while I simply stood back and listened to the conversation. I would butt in where necessary, and generally just do my best to ensure that this whole thing didn’t go sideways.
When the debate had devolved into two individuals shouting at each other, ready to leap across the table at one another, I figured it would be a pretty good time to step in.
My advisor was strong, being just a bit over level 100. All the people on this floor were high leveled, as combat was not meant to be a viable option here. It took all my strength, and several chains of mana, to restrain the man. Even then, I knew he wasn’t trying his hardest to escape. If he was I am not sure if I could have kept him in place.
The discussion cooled down shortly after, and eventually the two of them decided on not so peacefully coexisting. The two countries would be pretty much locked in a cold war for however long it took for one side to open fire.
That unfortunately did not fulfill the objective of the floor.
Floor 34: Age of Peace (Instanced)
Stop the incoming war while benefiting the Hyra Kingdom.
I pointed to a cup sitting on the table. “Excuse me, but could I have that cup?” I ask, pointing to it.
Everyone else in the room looked confused, but tensions were so high between the two who were actually sitting that they didn’t have time to care about why I wanted that cup.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
After picking the cup up, I hand it to my advisor. “That is now property of Hyra kingdom.” I say, before looking to the empire’s diplomat. “Would you say that discussions are done for today?”
“I guess you could say that.” He shrugs.
With that, the floor is complete. I am immediately greeted with the floor completion notification and am asked if I would like to go to floor 35 or return to floor 1. I choose to go back to floor 1, as after all of this diplomacy garbage I just really wanted to cool off. This was actually my first time returning to floor one since the floor event a while back, so it was nice to finally be back somewhere with a complete lack of danger.
I decided to head right for Hassan’s town after arriving back on the floor. It had been a while since I had a really good meal, and I just hadn’t seen the guy in a while. After running over to the town, I was met with quite the surprise. The entire place had been abandoned. I look around a bit and couldn’t find a single person there. After about ten minutes of searching, I gave up and just headed back to the outpost.
Why would the city have been abandoned? Did something drive them out? I honestly had no clue what the reason could be for the absence of people, so it was time to put on my detective hat and solve the case of the missing townsfolk.
“Oh, the people at Hassan’s old town?” Ben said after I asked about the missing people. “They all moved to the great city together a few days ago. There weren’t very many of them left after the first wave of people left the tutorial, so they went to the great city to be around more people.”
And just like that, another case had been solved by the great detective River. For now I could set aside my detective cap and tobacco pipe.
“Any reason that we didn’t also move everybody there?” I ask Ben.
“Well, the average level of the people here are actually a good bit higher than pretty much everywhere else, and we didn’t lose nearly the same amount of people that the other towns and cities did. Since everything is running pretty smoothly, we didn’t see much reason to merge ourselves with another city.”
“Huh, I hadn’t realized the people here had higher levels? Any idea why that is?”
“I’ve talked to a few others about it, and our best guess is that it is due to Blair being a part of our outpost. The constant supply of high quality weapons and armor has been a boon from day one. People feel much more confident taking on the floors of the tower when kitted out in a full set of gear.”
“Is she still salty about how long it took for you guys to start sending some resources her way?”
Ben winces a bit. “Yeah, she still thinks we are not valuing her work enough, despite the fact that she is probably the wealthiest person to be using the coins that Andrea and the others in the great city put together. That has made her a bit... difficult to work with.”
“Well besides simply buying the things she has made, has the outpost actually provided any further support?”
“No?” Ben responds, sounding a bit confused. “I feel that her being quite wealthy is already quite a bit of support.”
“Okay, but what can she actually do with that money? From what I am hearing, it sounds like you guys give her money to buy materials from you. You are essentially just giving her some meaningless coins that are only good for buying materials you could simply give her for free. I’m sure she isn’t going to just hang on to the dozens of weapons and armor sets that she makes as practice.”
“That might be a viable option.” Ben says, nodding.
“Well it is starting to look like your only option if you don’t want to her just disconnect from the outpost entirely.”
“You have a good relationship with her right? How do you manage to keep that stable?”
“Because it is an equal exchange.” I say. “I give her materials she can’t get anywhere else, and she gives me items I couldn’t get anywhere else. She is giving you items of a quality you can’t get anywhere else, while she receives materials that she could easily go and get herself.”
“I guess I’ll have to go talk to her about it.” He relents. “Though I can’t just dedicate half of the outposts resources to earning her support.”
“I think you are overestimating how difficult that will be. Just the occasional monster corpse given with no compensation would go a long way. Hell, even just some ores from the fourth floor would help. I heard some people discovered veins of ore deep within that floor.”
“Yeah, we have people working to dig even deeper to find better metal. I’ll be sure to direct some of it her way.”
With that, I left for the great city. The conversation I had just had felt eerily similar to one I’d had a while ago. I shook off the feeling of deja vu, focusing on the run to the city. It was not a very long run. I used empower to speed it up, and with my cloak of flight I used the same hover step strategy I used against the titan to speed up my journey even more. Finally, I used my newest skill mana thrust to accelerate even more. With all of these compounding sources of speed, I was beginning to approach 500 kilometers per hour. The ground beneath me was nothing more than a blur, and even with my high perception it was hard to track objects as I passed by them.
At this speed, it was difficult to steer effectively. I had to move out of the way of trees long before I reached them, and stopping would take quite a bit of time. I had been trying to avoid hitting any trees at all, but after an unfortunate run in with one particularly dense clump of forest I had turned two of the large oak trees into splinters. I had been unharmed at least. The splinters were not nearly strong enough to penetrate my mana shield, even at the frankly insane speed I was moving at.
After catching sight of the great city on the horizon, I began slowing myself down by equipping my titan skin armor and increasing its weight. Mana thrust activated in the opposite direction, working to rid me of the speed I had built up. I leaned back as far as I could and dug my feet into the soil. A trench about 30 centimeters deep stretched the distance of a few kilometers, marking just how much distance I had needed to stop moving. I sent my armor back within my aura.
Using my aura to sweep the dirt off my body, I approached the city at a much more leisurely pace. Almost as soon as I reached the gate to the city, I saw two familiar people walking out of it. One was the cloaked figure from the floor event, and the other was their archer companion.
The archer waved at me, walking over as the cloaked individual followed her. “Hey, just the person we were looking for. We were actually just about to go to your outpost to look for you.”
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask.
“Well, we just so happened to hear that you took down the goblin boss back during the event, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to trade for that bow it was carrying.”
She seemed really eager to get her hands on the bow. She didn’t seem very good at hiding her emotions. Her ever stoic companion didn’t have any outwardly obvious thoughts on the matter, standing as still as a scarecrow.
I just shook my head as I responded. “Sorry, but that bow has probably been taken apart by now. I gave it to somebody to study the enchantments and craftsmanship.”
Just as the excitement had been easy to see, the complete horror at the bow having been destroyed was just as plain to see on the woman’s face.
“You- You’re kidding right?” She says, astonished. “That bow was legendary rarity. It is one of the most powerful weapons any of us have seen in the tower so far. You mean to tell me it was just ‘taken apart’?”
“Yep. I’m surprised, did you not get a better weapon for finishing the bonus objective on the floor event?”
“I got a legendary rarity bow, but it is barely even that rarity. I feel like we were robbed on the rewards.”
“Maybe you were.” I say, deciding not to mention the item I got for completion of the event. That might just sour her mood more.
“We definitely were. After the event, all this guy ended up getting was-”
She is cut off by an abrupt cough from the figure behind her, who was clearly telling her to shut up. She at least got the hint, and didn’t say anymore on that matter.
“Anyways,” She continued. “we were just about to go and finish off floor 33. Maybe after finishing that we’ll catch up to your level again. We had thought staying within the event for a bit of extra time to kill goblin assassins was the way to go, but I guess just killing the boss ourselves and leaving would have been better.”
I identify both of them, seeing that each of their levels had grown to 88. Through me climbing the past four floors, I myself had reached level 89, keeping my lead over them. It was surprising to hear that they’d stayed to kill goblins but-
“Wait, so you were still on floor two well after I left? Were you there to see me fighting that boss?”
The woman looks momentarily taken off guard. She clearly hadn’t meant for that bit of information to slip. Once more her lack of being able to hide her emotions makes it easy to figure out the answer without her saying anything. Before she could come up with some response though, her cloaked companion speaks up.
“Yes, we did watch your fight.” He says in a very normal voice. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t something so ordinary.
“Well, thank you for not interfering.” I say, nodding.
“If we had, I feel we wouldn’t have learned nearly as much as we did about you.”
Those words were a bit too ominous for my liking, but the actual tone itself didn’t hold any malice.
“So, what’d you think of the fight? If I knew I had spectators I may have put on a bit more of a show.”
“It was... impressive. I will admit that much. At the start of the fight I’d been expecting you to lose and retreat. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see that you didn’t.”
“Do you think you’d be up for a sparring match in the future then? I’m kind of curious about what you are capable of. I have yet to see you in serious combat.”
“Maybe some day in the future.” The man nods. “Not now though. I would need time to prepare.”
“Take all the time you need.” I say. “Because whenever you are ready, I’ll be expecting a damn good fight from you.”